Bind mount

Using a bind mount might seem to accomplish what a symlink does but it happens at a lower level and changes the underlying topology of the filesystem (and hence it requires root privileges).

mount --bind /path/to/existing /path/to/target

To persist changes, update the fstab file. Here is an example of how I bind mounted my home directory from another partition that I mounted:

UUID=5c056ca5-14ee-4c9a-b3c7-87f0c6998d8f   /media/legacy    ext4          defaults       0       2
/media/legacy/home/darkman                  /home/darkman    none          bind           0       2

Apply changes:

sudo mount -a # or reboot

Un-mount:

sudo umount /home/darkman

Unable to umount: Target is busy

Make sure there are no processes that have the files opened in that mount. This can be found as:

lsof | grep ' /home/darkman'

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• Tag: linux